PROVIDENCE -- A city firefighter remains in critical condition after suffering a heart attack early this morning while controlling the pump on a fire truck that had responded to a house fire in the Silver Lake section.
Kenneth Baker, 50, of Pawtucket, was on a respirator at Rhode Island Hospital, Fire Chief David Costa said this morning. Hospital officials said this afternoon he still in critical condition.
Photo courtesy of wpri.com
The scene of the fire on Ralph Street in Providence where firefigher Kenneth Baker suffered a heart attack.
He had not regained consciousness, union president Paul A. Doughty said at midday. His wife, two children, father and sister were beside him at the hospital.
Baker was working the pump on Engine 6 when he collapsed outside the single-family home at 70 Ralph St., Doughty said. He had not gone inside the house, but it was the second fire he had responded to last night, Costa said.
“Luckily, we had other firefighters right there who witnessed him collapse,” Costa said. “I believe that’s the only reason he’s still alive.”
Baker also had a high level of cyanide in his blood and required a chemical antidote, but doctors do not know if the cyanide triggered the heart attack, Costa said.
Ten city firefighters who responded to a fire yesterday morning at El Fogon restaurant, 1197 Broad St., were tested throughout the night for cyanide poisoning, and two had high enough levels of the poison in their blood that they needed a chemical antidote to neutralize it, Costa said.
Those firefighters are Edward Donahue of Providence and Anthony Toro of Lincoln. They are on medical leave for a few days, but doctors have said they should be OK with a couple days of rest, Costa said.
Although Baker also had cyanide in his blood, he had not responded to the fire yesterday morning at El Fogon restaurant.
During a fire, a number of regular household products and plastics can give off cyanide with the right combination of heat and oxygen, Costa said.
However, this is an unusual situation, he said.
“We’ve never even had an incident like this, and to have this many people that have been experiencing some symptoms and actually having three people who had to have the antidote, we’ve never experienced this before,” Costa said.
As doctors were testing firefighters throughout the night for cyanide poisoning after the El Fogon incident, they tested Baker when he arrived early this morning, not knowing whether he had been at El Fogon, Costa said.
Because Baker also tested positive for cyanide, firefighters from both house fires to which Baker responded have been alerted, Costa said.
Some firefighters from the Ralph Street fire have already been tested for cyanide poisoning and two must be re-tested before doctors determine if they need to receive the chemical antidote, Costa said.
This morning, the department was contacting the firefighters who responded to the first fire Baker worked during his shift, which began around 5 p.m. yesterday. That fire, at a three-story apartment building, 125-127 Knight St., displaced 12 adults and 16 children, according to Angie Moncada of the Red Cross.
Doughty said the firefighters' union is seizing the air bottles that the firefighters used at Knight Street and newly filled air bottles for tests to determine whether the cyanide was contracted at the fire scene or from the site at the Wayland Square fire station where the air bottles are filled.
The fire on Ralph Street was reported at 2:07 a.m. this morning, Costa said. It started in a bathroom and was not large. Firefighters controlled it fairly quickly, he said.
The department had a rescue truck on scene, and firefighters immediately performed CPR and shocked Baker’s heart a couple of times with a defibrillator, Costa said. He was then transported to Rhode Island Hospital.
Rescue firefighter Paul O'Rourke happened to be next to Baker and saw him fall, Doughty said. O'Rourke, Rescue Capt. Steve Laroche and other firefighters ran to Baker’s side and began performing CPR on him, using the defibrillator until they revived his heart to a “survivable rhythm,” Doughty said.
Baker was rushed to the emergency room, where medical staff worked on him for more than an hour and a half, Doughty said.
According to an article on the occupationalhazards.com Web site, cyanide poisoning is a major cause of smoke inhalation death and injury. It says cyanide poisoning may be overlooked by emergency responders and emergency room personnel. The article reports on an analysis presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Fire-Rescue Med section of the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
"Firefighters and emergency medical personnel may not realize it, but in many smoke inhalation cases, cyanide can be an equal or greater toxic threat than carbon monoxide," Richard Alcorta, M.D., medical director, Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, said at the conference.
"That's why we are educating emergency response professionals to become more aware of the risks of cyanide poisoning, as well as the need to be able to give prompt treatment to improve a victim's chances of survival."
ARTICLE TOOLS: 
